A thunderbolt. A flash of lightning through the horizon. The smell of rain nearby. So far, so normal for a summer storm. Or so I thought on Monday evening (12 July) in south-east London – before opening Twitter to see torrents of floodwater cascading down into Chelsea’s Sloane Square Underground station, Hampstead’s coffee shops submerged, and furniture floating in a Portobello Road bar. A whole month’s rain in one day. Three inches in 90 minutes.
Days later, an infinitely worse deluge hit western Europe. At time of writing, at least 120 people are dead and hundreds more still missing after record-breaking flash floods. The majority were killed in Germany, where whole houses were washed away by an overflowing Rhine. Some drowned in basement cellars, others in attempting to rescue the stranded. The scenes are terrible and shocking – even in the context of this summer’s extreme heatwave and wildfire events in the US, and even to the climate scientists who have long warned of where the general trend is heading.
Content from our partners
